


We'll Build Our Altar Here

by cerie



Series: Altars [3]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Out of the Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:44:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen/Will. The conclusion to the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/13429">Altars series</a>.  When everything seems to be going right for Helen and Will, the past shows up and threatens to destroy everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Build Our Altar Here

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sci-Fi and Fantasy Big Bang 2012 and special thanks to Lisa and Sam, who provided GORGEOUS editing and art to me :)
> 
> ETA: [Art for this story.](http://sheikah.dreamwidth.org/451986.html)

Three years after All This and Heaven Too

The ring’s been burning a hole in his pocket for months now and it’s almost become kind of a worrystone, in a way, something to touch and comfort himself with when shit gets bad. Will thinks it’s a talisman, in a way, and a reminder that even though deep down he’ll still be the nerdy kid with the glasses and no dad, he’s come a hell of a long way. Helen Druitt is sort of the pinnacle of all his achievements, at least personally, and holding her ring in his pocket means he can conquer the world.

He can’t give it to her, mind, but he thinks about it. He wants it perfect, when he asks, and he wants to ask Ashley about it first before he does. He and Ashley get along well enough for the most part but he knows, deep down, she’s still a little skeeved that her mom’s a cougar and she’s with Will. Mostly, though, he thinks Ashley’s grateful. She’s never really been overt about it, it’s not her way, but he knows she’s more accepting of him than anyone else her mother might have wanted to date and that feels good.

He touches the ring one last time and gets jarred out of his daydreams by someone awkwardly clearing their throat in the doorway of his office. It’s technically his office hours, more or less, but most of what he gets are adoring co-eds who think Dr. Zimmerman is “dreamy” and bring him presents. It’s...flattering, in a weird way, but it mostly just creeps him out because he’s so not that guy and Helen is...everything. When she enters the room, all eyes turn on her, and it’s just insane that it’s _him_ she goes home with at night.

Today’s visitor, though, is someone a lot more familiar and someone Will hasn’t seen in years now. She looks different: happy, glowing and, oh yeah, visibly pregnant. _That’s_ a shocker and it takes a few moments to get up from his desk and walk around to embrace her. Will’s got his face buried against her hair before he speaks, voice a little rough from emotions.

“Abby, I haven’t seen you in forever. God, it seems like a lifetime ago.” It was, in a way. Will’s life in Maine’s a lot different than being in the FBI and seeing Abby reminds him of long nights doing research, longer nights doing stakeouts and the general aura of loneliness that clung to those years. He did good work for them and, in ways, had been a hotshot and a star but it was nothing compared to Helen. God, he was a sap.

“So when did all this happen?” Admittedly, the Christmas cards have gotten few and far between since it’s kind of a hassle to drive to another town to post them and while people know who _he_ is, Will’s been careful to keep separate bank accounts, a separate house (even though he more or less lives with Helen) and tries to keep anyone from tracking Helen as best he can. It still breaks every rule of protection but he hopes since Druitt and Tesla are in prison to rot and Griffin committed suicide, she’s safe.

Will would never be able to live with himself if he endangered her, not after everything she’s been through.  
“Oh, well, I got married um. Last year? We did this little conference thingie in England with MI-5 and I met the...most amazing guy,” Abby gushes and Will has to admit, it looks good on her. It’s good to know she got her happy ending too and that she’d gotten it with someone who (apparently) cares a good deal about her given the size of that diamond on her left hand. He lifted her hand and turned it a little, admiring the play of light that the stone set off. He’s got a vested interest in how engagement rings look, after all.

“This is a nice one. What’s his name, then?” He squeezes Abby’s hand and motions her over to his couch to sit down because, really, who doesn’t offer a pregnant lady a nice, comfortable place to sit? It’s not in Will to let her be uncomfortable. Abby gives him a weird look like he’s grown two heads and Will’s struck by how _easy_ it all is to fall right back into their old lines. He’d missed her, apparently, and she’s clearly missed him if she flew cross country when a phone call would have sufficed.

“Declan. Declan MacRae,” Abby says and she practically sparkles with it. She fumbles with her purse for a moment and draws out her wallet (slim, leather, designer - someone’s moved up in the world, clearly) and shows him a picture of her with an older guy’s arm draped around her shoulders. He’s good-looking in a rugged sort of way and, more importantly, he looks completely stoked to be standing next to Abby. It’s what she deserves.

“I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call since that’s a hell of a long flight for someone who’s in her second trimester,” Will says, eyeing her, and they play out a little showdown while Abby tries to bluff and fails miserably. She’s always worn her emotions on her face and she’s a pushover when it comes to poker so this isn’t entirely unexpected. She tucks her wallet back into her purse and sighs, pressing her lips together.

“I’m desk duty right now, since...you know. Anyway, we got a bulletin today. John Druitt’s escaped prison, somehow, and I didn’t want you hearing about it on the news before you heard from us. The press is under a gag order for the next 48 hours but I thought that you and Helen just...needed to know. You’re still sort of living with her, right?”

It’s kind of an understatement, what he is with Helen, but for the purposes of this conversation, Will simply nods. There’s no point in being anything but professional and it’s easy to slip back into the old suit of Special Agent Zimmerman and thinking about anything and everything he can do to protect the asset. The asset is, and always will be, Helen Druitt. There’s simply no alternative and if he has to be more than just a mild-mannered (hah, hardly) college professor to do it, then he will.

“I’ll figure out something to tell her. She’s been doing better lately, with her anxiety, but I don’t want to send her into a panic if I don’t have to.” It’s luckily the last day before Spring break so at least Will knows he’ll have a week to spend with her while he breaks this. He had _wanted_ to take her somewhere tropical so he could propose and had even gotten permission from the US Marshals to do it but he wonders if maybe it’s not such a good idea now. Helen might need the safety of home to hear this news and he doesn’t want to shake her up any more than he absolutely has to.

“Thanks for the heads up, Abby,” Will says, touching her shoulder lightly and Abby nods. She understands it too, in a way, and now that she has her own family on the way Will’s pretty sure she understands that if anything happened to Helen or Ashley, he’d never recover from that blow. It’s not something as simple as breaking up and moving on, not where Helen’s concerned, and even if they did end up breaking off their relationship, Will is _always_ going to protect her. He’s always going to be there for her. 

He simply can’t do anything else.

***

Helen’s been working in the garden today. The ground’s finally thawed enough to do some maintenance and get her flower beds ready for planting and it feels good to dig in the earth and _do_ something instead of sitting around the house. The schools are on break and, so, she is as well by necessity and sometimes she wonders if being a children’s librarian wasn’t something she should have done before in her old life. It’s fulfilling and sort of sweet, getting to shape young minds, and it’s not something that makes her hate herself after a long day at work.

All the same, she’s glad for the time to herself, to be Helen, after a long day of being someone else, it’s nice to be herself. Will always calls her Helen and that she’s grateful for - so often it feels like Will’s the only thing that keeps her from losing everything and while her anxiety’s better these days, it’s never truly going to go away. She’s always going to feel that nervous twist in the pit of her stomach and her palms will get sweaty but with medication and the simple solace of Will, she’ll manage.

She’s knelt in the flower beds, hands dug into the thawing earth, when she hears an audible little pop that she can’t quite place. She barely has time to react when she feels a hand close over her mouth and the strange, disorienting feeling of disassembling and reassembling somewhere else entirely. It’s the cliffs of Dover, weirdly, and Helen’s eyes are wide and panicked when she realizes it’s John Druitt standing in front of her.

“Did you really think I’d never find you again, Helen? You can run but you’ll never be able to hide. I’ve learned a few new skills since you so deftly put me away. Really, quite idiotic of you to allow your protective custody to come live with you. For a federal agent, he’s surprisingly quite stupid about keeping you safe.”

Helen wants to protest that Will’s not an agent any longer but the words just won’t come out. Instead, bile rises in her throat when John brushes a long-fingered hand down her cheek. She knows he’s not able to control it, the serum had done things to all of them, but it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s very much alone with a insanely dangerous man who’s killed for much less than being put in federal prison. She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut, and forces her words out.

“Take me back, John. I won’t tell anyone you’ve escaped if you just take me back and you can live free, I promise. I bear you no ill will. I never have, not really, and I just...I like my life. I want to go back to it.”

He laughs and Helen wonders how something that had once made her so happy, John Druitt’s laugh and smile, had twisted into something that frightens her more than anything her over-active mind could ever dream up. He tugs her back against his chest and it’d be intimate and romantic if his arm didn’t feel like an iron band against her waist. She wants to move, to leave, to scream and all she can do is stand stock-still instead.

“Oh, I’ll take you back, certainly. In what form, I can’t say, but I’m certain you can beg pretty. You’ve always been able to beg pretty. Do you remember?”

Helen remembers. She doesn’t like to demonize him, not for something that, truly, she thinks he can’t control but she remembers. She remembers hard sex, his hand bruising her neck and hips and everything in between. She remembers being hit, being unable to fight back, and she remembers just how freeing it was when she finally filed a protection order and got him out of her life. And yet, even still, she just can’t hold it against him. In some twisted way, she feels like John’s madness is her fault, and she’ll never, ever be able to blame him for what he’s done. Not completely.

It’s her own downfall, too, the fact that she’ll never be able to blame him for what she ultimately had a hand in herself. If they’d not experimented on themselves, if they’d not been driven by greed and ego to be bigger and brighter than any who’d come before. It had started as a way to save Imogene and had become something much darker and more sinister than that. Even altruism could turn selfish, depending upon what one’s tools were for achieving that goal. With Nigel’s money and all of their brains, the serum had gotten out of control and they’d all suffered terribly for it, Helen and John the worst.

“John. Take me back. Now.”

And just like that, he’s left her sobbing in the upturned earth, and it’s like he was never there at all.

***

Will intends to tell her. It just has to be the perfect time and he doesn’t want to upset Helen so he waits. It’s turned off cool again, unseasonably so, and it’s just the perfect kind of weather to settle on the couch with a pile of blankets, a bowl of popcorn and terrible movies. Well, good movies if Helen’s picking and terrible ones if Will’s picking and they’ve been switching off all day. For now, it’s an old Audrey Hepburn movie and Helen’s put the popcorn away to sprawl in his lap.

Holly Golightly is on the screen and Will’s hand is tangled in Helen’s curls and he still doesn’t have the balls to say it. Instead, he pets her hair and when she shifts and tips her face up to his, he can’t help but kiss her. Helen’s the best kisser he’s ever been with, as trite as it sounds, and it feels like there’s nothing wrong in the world when she’s soft and sweet under his mouth and his hands.

So he should be talking and instead, kissing turns to Will sliding his hands beneath the thin t-shirt Helen’s wearing to cup her bare breasts and his mouth slides from hers down to her neck to suck a mark against her pulse point. This is easier. This is better than hurting her and upsetting her with news about John and maybe it makes him the worst boyfriend in the world but God, he hates seeing her hurt. He _never_ wants to hurt her.

Will’s not sure when Helen’s shirt comes off (sometime between the hands and the lips and the way she squirms against his lap just like _that_ ) but she’s topless and any thoughts he might have had about stopping them to actually talk are gone. If it’s going to happen, it’ll be after sex, and Will thinks that might just be better. Talk to Helen when she’s soft and relaxed and she’s less likely to get tense; it usually works whenever he has something potentially troubling to bring up as cheap a trick as it is.

It feels a little teenager to get to third base out on the couch but Will likes it, likes seeing Helen all natural and soft. Helen has this tendency to want to doll herself up for him, lace and silk and candlelight, and Will prefers this instead. Their first time was spontaneous, after all, and he doesn’t need her gilding the lily when everything he needs, loves, worships and adores is just plain Helen. No trappings necessary. No show. No fuss.

His training tells him that makes her feel more comfortable and gives her more control, which is why he never mentions it, but he’s always glad when he can con her into this on the spur of the moment when she doesn’t have on makeup and she’s a little less than flawless. That, the imperfection, _that_ is what makes her Will’s ideal woman. 

He kisses her hair again, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, before sliding down to his knees and tugging at her panties (boyshorts, pink, taunting him the whole fucking time they’ve been trying to watch movies) so he can get at her skin. Helen’s got long, slim legs that pretty much incite a riot any time she wears something that doesn’t cover her from neck to ankles and Will, while hard-pressed to claim any part of her body as his favorite, definitely considers her legs in the top three. Definitely a contender for favorite, that’s for damn sure, and he kisses one perfectly-pedicured toe before sliding his mouth up the curve of her foot, nipping at her ankle, all the way up in a lazy path to the inside of her knee.

Maybe that’s not a typical erogenous zone but Will Zimmerman’s not typical and he takes his time kissing and nipping at sensitive skin there until Helen’s curling her toes and whimpering for more. He can’t take it when she begs, he can’t hold out, because all he wants is to be what she needs. It doesn’t take him that long to get between her thighs and Will slides his hands under her to cup her hips and drag her down to his mouth. She’s so wet that his tongue glides easy between her labia and all he thinks, feels and breathes is _Helen_. He loves doing this for her and always will, not just because she screams like a banshee for it but because it’s something he can do that she doesn’t have to worry about pleasing him with, doesn’t have to check her reactions. She can just _be_ and that’s the hottest thing in the world to Will.

When Helen tightens her hand in his hair and pulls, Will shifts his mouth a few inches to the left and bites her thigh sharply before soothing it with his tongue. She likes that too, based on the way she rocks her hips up against his face, and Will tips his head back just enough to be greeted with Helen gasping and tugging at her own nipples. They’re red and peaked, begging to be sucked, and when Will gets enough of bringing her off with his mouth, he’s going to lay her out on the bed and suck them while he’s fucking her.

Helen whimpers and rolls her hips in a tell-tale way and Will slips his fingers up and into her, crooking them and teasing out the last of the orgasm. She’s still panting and he’s still working her on his tongue and his fingers, bringing her down slow instead of stopping all the sensation as soon as she’s gotten off. She likes that, being petted and cossetted and just plain loved and Will’s never going to deny it for her. Never. 

Helen yanks sharply at his hair and Will takes the hint, moving his mouth up to kiss hers and he knows Helen can taste herself there, can feel how wet his mouth is because he’s been worshiping her. He tugs his mouth away and reaches for her hand, twining their fingers together. It’s her left hand and he wants nothing more than to see his ring there but he’s not going to do that when her eyes are glassy from pleasure and his face is smeared with her juices. It’s going to be right. It’s going to be him in a suit with flowers and her in the perfect dress and everything she could ever have imagined and then some. She deserves it.

It’s only a short walk down the hall to their bedroom but it still feels like Will’s run a marathon by the time he’s there. He’s still dressed, more or less, and while boxers and a t-shirt are hardly rocket science to take off, his fingers are clumsy. God, he hates lying to her, even if it _is_ to protect her, and Will takes in a few short, sharp breaths to clear his head before whipping off his clothes.

She’s already sprawled out on the bed, completely inviting, and Will covers her and slides in slow before bending his head to lick and suck at her breasts. She likes that, dual stimulation, and Will likes it when she’s slick and wet around his cock and all he can hear is her breathing and the wet, rhythmic slap of their bodies coming together. That’s better than thinking about Druitt by far, better than thinking about Helen scared and withdrawn again.

“Will, dear God, Will, _please_.” Helen always begs like that as if it takes more than her to get him there and he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t try a little harder to bring her off again. Maybe she needs more than he gives her, even if he tries his best to spoil her with affection and love, and while it’s awkward, he reaches for her thigh and hooks it over his hip to change the angle. It seems to be enough, though, and while the orgasm is softer than before it’s definitely there and it’s enough that Will’s seeing stars and coming too. He buries his words against her throat, a litany of “I love you” and “Be my wife,” that he really, really hopes she can’t parse.

After, when he pulls out but still tugs her close, he’s playing with her hair and she’s curled contently up against him, her breathing and his loud in the dark. Maybe he should ask but the part of him that’s still a scared, lost little boy doesn’t want to ruin a good thing so he doesn’t. The only thing he can’t hear from Helen Druitt is no and as much as he loves her and as much as she loves him, he’s still not sure she’s going to want to marry him.

And they’re good without it. At least, that’s what he keeps telling himself.

***

Neither of them have work in the morning and that’s a good thing, considering Will wakes up and spends the first five minutes of the fog between sleep and wakefulness nuzzling against the back of Helen’s neck and murmuring nonsense that he really hopes she isn’t awake to hear. He needs to just _ask_ her, tell her about Druitt, or both.

Instead, he opts for a lazy tour of his hands along her body, fingers teasing and plucking at her nipples and he’s rewarded when she arches her back and grinds her ass against his cock. That’s better than working up her anxiety, certainly, and after letting her squirm around for a minute he rolls so he’s pinning her. He grins and pushes her hair back from her face.

“Morning, you.”

Funny thing about Helen is that, for all she complains about being old (and she _is_ over 50, thanks to her monkeying around with elixir), she’s actually kind of young at heart. Case in point: when Will slides down her body to kiss between her breasts and down her stomach, she giggles maniacally and bats at him to try and get him to move. She’s ticklish and it’s precious, really, so obviously he’s going to keep doing it.

It’s only after he’s got his mouth fixed against her left hip that he lifts his head and his eyes have gone serious and dark once more. Hers are still sparkling with leftover laughter and it’s one of those moments where the tension just hangs in the air, suspended, and the wrong words can shatter the moment like bullets hitting glass.

“Will you marry me, Helen?”

For five little words, they seem momentous, and Will’s pretty sure he’s holding his breath while he waits for her answer. For all he’s nervous, he’s pretty sure he knows what her answer’s going to be and it’s really just a matter of her _giving_ it so he can breathe again. When she does answer, though, it’s slow and comes out...wrong, somehow. Her lips aren’t forming the right shapes, there’s no smiles, there’s no...

“No, Will. I’m quite sorry.”

Just like that, the glass shatters and Will lifts his head and moves to sit up. He’s not sure what his next move is supposed to be so he’s just quiet, instead, and wonders if that means he’s made her unhappy. Will’s life since he met her, almost, has been about protecting her and keeping her safe and happy. If he’s failed at it, they’ve got bigger issues than a proposal gone flat and he’s got some work to do because, ultimately, making Helen happy and making Helen feel safe is more important than his own ego. If there’s something deeper behind the rejection, he needs to know it, because he doesn’t want to make her more anxious than she already is.

But that’s going to have to wait. Right now, he’s hurt and stunned and needs to have some time to himself to clear his head. He doesn’t want to beg her to marry him and he doesn’t want to scare her by leaving so he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. Helen, meanwhile, has sat up with her knees drawn to her chest and her head tipped down so all he can see is a curtain of curls and waves instead of her eyes.

“We should probably talk,” Will says quietly. He wants, desperately, to reach out and touch her hair and tweak her curls like he usually does but instead he keeps his hands to himself. No sense in pressuring her or making her feel uncomfortable if his touch isn’t what she wants right now. _Or ever_ , he thinks idly but that’s a dangerous path. It’s just a no to a proposal, not a no to him personally, and it’s not over until she says it is.

“But I need to clear my head. I need...that wasn’t the answer I was expecting and I need to get some distance before I can really discuss it without bringing my own hurt feelings into it. I’m going to go running, okay?” She doesn’t respond and Will imagines, if he was in her position, he wouldn’t respond either. It’s awkward at best and mortifying at worst and maybe she needs the distance just as much as he does. Maybe if they have some time apart they can analyze where their relationship is and where they want it to go and while it might not end in a marriage, maybe a compromise can be reached that’s satisfying to them both.

He can tell she’s crying, silent sobs accompanied by a tremble in her hands and a shake in her shoulders, and he hates that. What he hates even more is that while every cell and every fiber of his being wants to go comfort her and dry those tears, he knows that he’s the reason she’s crying. That stings more than anything else ever could and he has to force himself to go get dressed and leave before he does something stupid like try to comfort her and hold her close.

“It was just...I thought it was something that would make us happy, Helen. I’m sorry I was wrong.”

He leaves with those words still hanging between them and hopes that they make enough of an impression that Helen considers his proposal even if she rejects it again. He loves her, more than anything, and right now he can’t even look at her because she’s torn his heart out. Maybe time and distance will give him the clarity he needs to untangle the mess between them.

Right now, he wants to give up. But he won’t. Not until it’s hopeless.

**

Will isn’t really surprised to come home and find that Helen’s gone. It was an awkward conversation and he’d left first, after all, so if the shoe was on the other foot he felt like he’d probably do the same thing. The car is still there, though, and all of her things and that makes Will wonder where, exactly, she might have gotten to. There’s only so far she could go without her purse or a change of clothes and even Helen upset would think to bring that much. He tries not to worry about it.

But trying not to worry about it is a lot easier before three, four and five hours pass and after dark, he’s started to actually worry. What if she’d gone out and gotten hit by a car? Attacked by a mugger? The former might happen but the latter he doubts; they don’t exactly live in a criminal hotbed. Still, she’s a grown woman and the police won’t take a missing persons’ report on an adult until after twenty four hours have passed. Considering he _just_ had a fight with her, maybe he’s not the best person to make that report.

He sends her a text and cringes when he hears the notification from across the room. Of course. Helen’s not the best at communicating even when they’re not fighting. It stands to reason that her cell phone’s not the first thing she’s going to grab when she’s upset and freaking out. But her pills are still here, too, and that just doesn’t fit.

For as long as Will has known her, Helen has been crippled by anxiety that, at some points, has been so bad that she couldn’t even step foot outside her door. She had a crippling fear of the unknown, of breaking her routines, and one of those routines is taking Valium like clockwork. She’s been taking four pills a day, the same time every day, ever since he met her. Helen without Valium is...just not within the scope of possibility. Also not within the scope of possibility is the fact that the pills are spilled across the glass surface of the coffee table, fanned out in disarray.

The cap’s rolled under the table and when Will reaches down to get it, he notices a tiny smudge of brick red gone dark. Blood. Will knows that he was only gone twenty, thirty minutes tops. Who or what could get inside the house, nab Helen, and be out before he got back? It just didn’t make sense. It made more sense that she’d just left so maybe something scared her. Emotionally distraught and riding high on a fight, Helen might spill her medication and cut her hand on something. What, Will didn’t know, but it made a hell of a lot more sense than someone just appearing out of thin air to _steal_ her.

 _Getting desperate, Zimmerman. You freaked her out and now you’re hoping someone just absconded with her so you don’t have to face the truth._ Sitting around and speculating isn’t doing any good, though, and Will decides that he ought to at least call Ashley. If it’s something innocent and Helen’s just upset and needs to blow off steam, there’s a good chance she might have called Ashley. Her phone’s here, yes, but he can check the last few calls.

He tries to tamp down the flicker of hope that sparks in him and crosses the room to get the phone, thumbing through her last calls and texts. There’s what looks like a draft in her messages and Will pulls it up; when he sees it, his face goes pale. Maybe his idle hoping that something happened to her over her just wanting to leave him has shot him in the foot.

> W, J here, not sure, tele

Will isn’t sure what the fuck that means, exactly, but given his earlier conversation with Abby, he can come up with a pretty strong theory that the J in question is probably John Druitt and if John Druitt’s got her, nothing good can come of it. He’d hoped that Druitt would steer clear of them or, at least, it’d take him a while to make his way cross country but it seems like that’s not something he can put stock in any longer. There don’t seem to be any other calls or texts that are important and Will powers off the phone and tucks it into his pocket before grabbing his own. He’s got calls to make, now, and while he swore he was done with the FBI and with anything remotely resembling it after finding Ashley and putting Helen’s friends behind bars the first time, if there’s anything that can get him back in the game, it’s finding her.

***

Ashley’s a jack of all trades now, more or less, and the bread and butter of a PI business is divorces. Husbands and wives aren’t always the kind of people who need to be married to each other, after all, and Ashley doesn’t have a hell of a lot of faith in the institution of marriage anyway. Her own parents, for example, had been one domestic violence charge after another and Ashley has pretty much decided to 86 the idea of long term commitment with anything other than her cat and her HBO subscription.

She’s parked outside a hotel, the seedy kind where you pay an hourly rate instead of a nightly one, trying to snap pictures of a city councilman with his (male) lover. Ashley personally thinks if the guy’s gay, it’s nobody’s business, but apparently this kind of shit is huge scandal in the realm of politics. It pays, anyway, and she doesn’t really bring her personal morals into it all that often. In that way, she’s more like her dad than her mom.

Her dad, whom she hasn’t seen in years now. The bad thing about PI work is that it’s a lot of long hours in nondescript sedans with nothing but the shutter of the camera and your own thoughts to keep you company. Ashley isn’t really fond of slowing down and smelling the roses and being in one place for too long makes her twitch; what’s worse is being alone and _thinking_. 

Today’s thought of choice apparently seems to be her dad and Ashley wonders how long it had been bad and they’d just tried to hide it from her. John Druitt, when she was a kid, was nothing like he was now. He’d been a devoted father, showed up at every soccer match and piano recital, and had even seemed to like her mom more often than not. The fighting didn’t really start until she was a teenager and the other stuff, the beatings and the emotional damage, well. That didn’t start until she was out of the house.

Ashley’s always thought that her mother couldn’t lie for shit but maybe the lie was that she was just too good at it. Doesn’t matter, now, because Druitt’s locked up behind bars and her mom’s got someone new in her life. It’s weird, because Will’s not really all that much older than her and, honestly, still in the age range of men that Ashley would potentially date but anyone who’s ever seen them together just _knows_.

There’s nobody else in the world when Will’s in the room with Helen and it’s pretty much the same for her mom. It’s a little gross, sometimes, because they’re still in the lovey dovey handholding stage but it’s sweet, too, and Ashley thinks her mom kind of deserves sweet. Her dad was an asshole, after all, and Helen’s never done anything but try to be a good mom and a good wife. Maybe it’s thinking about Will that makes it happen but her phone starts blowing up. First texts, which she ignores, and then actual calls, which make her worry. Will never calls her up just to chat. Usually it’s a hi passed through Helen when Ashley calls in to catch up and it’s never needed to be more than that. Will’s not her dad, doesn’t want to be her dad, and is perfectly content to be the guy that her mom lives with.

“I’m working.” It’s short and clipped because she _is_ working and chit-chatting with Will isn’t exactly on the top of her priority list. Unless he’s calling because her mom _can’t_ and that’s all kinds of problematic in ways that Ashley really doesn’t want to think about. When Will speaks, his voice is kind of high and worried. 

“Ashley, I’ve got a lot to tell you all at once so just hear me out, okay? 

Ashley doesn’t like Will’s tone. It’s the federal agent tone, not her Mom’s goofy boyfriend, and that raises hackles on the back of her neck. Her mother’s got a fair few enemies and considering the last time she’d pissed them off, _Ashley_ had ended up kidnapped, Ashley’s not real fond of them nosing around again. Worse still, if they’ve got Will worried, it’s probably pretty bad for her mom at the moment.

“Yeah, shoot. I’m on the clock but I’m just about finished. Besides, this is more important. Which of the goons showed up on your doorstep this time?”

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just her mother being paranoid again because Helen Druitt has some of the worse social anxiety that Ashley’s ever seen and she can make a mountain out of a molehill easily. Maybe that’s all this is and she’s wrapped Will up into it, somehow, and there’s nothing that’s actually wrong. Maybe. 

Then again, while Helen can panic about everything from going to the store to getting a phone call, when Will gets worked up, there’s usually a need to worry. There’d been the time when there had been broken windows and weird garden vandalism that Ashley would have chalked up to just neighborhood kids and had turned out to be an actual peeping tom that they’d caught before he escalated. Sometimes a little fear is a healthy thing and if Will’s calling, well. Maybe there’s something to it after all.

“I suspect it was your father.” Ashley goes cold at that. Her dad and mom together never ends well and if there’s anyone who has it out for Helen, it’s going to be Druitt. It’s easier to think of them as third parties instead of her parents, as subject and victim instead of Dad and Mom, but even Ashley isn’t that great at separating. She imagines Will’s slightly better but Helen’s still his girlfriend; he’s got to be more worried than he’s letting on.

“I thought he was in prison and they threw away the key?” Will makes a noise on the other end of the line and Ashley’s heart sinks. Okay, so, maybe he’s got some kind of weird powers like her mom never aging and Tesla’s electricity. It wouldn’t be the first time, anyway, and Ashley figures her whole family’s got to be full of freaks at this point. It’s not like she ever gets injured or sick, as well proven three years prior, and it makes sense she got it from both Mom _and_ Dad.

“Yeah. Looks like he flew the coop, somehow, and got your mother in the process. Bureau’s on it but considering I don’t work for them anymore and Abby’s on maternity leave, they’ll have idiots assigned. I thought maybe you and I would do a much better job at actually sniffing out the truth. Can you be here on the next flight?”

Ashley isn’t really sure why Will actually _asks_ considering she’s got her tablet out to book the flight even as he’s saying the words but she confirms it.

“Yeah. I’m out in a couple hours and you better be at the airport when I get there.”

***

Helen isn’t entirely sure where they are considering John’s particular gift doesn’t lend itself to an aerial view. They’re underground, certainly, and it looks like some sort of refurbished basement. The walls seem to be reinforced and soundproofed which, of course, facilitates anything John might want to do to her. Helen is a bit tougher than she’d been before and she isn’t going to lay down without a fight the way she had when they were married but she’s still not entirely certain how she’s going to get out of here.

If only there were a way to contact Will. She knows Will would have alerted the authorities and, more than likely, started up a search of his own. Will is a more than capable investigator and sees things that others don’t or that they’re simply not expecting to see and she hopes, desperately, that he won’t be blinded by his emotions and will be able to put those skills of his to use.

John doesn’t entirely keep her in ill accommodations, at least. There’s a little table with two chairs, a bookshelf, a CD player and a bed. No windows in her cell, no, and no computer or phone to seek the outside world but there’s no shortage of things to do. There’s plenty of light even if she can’t tell the hour of the day and she’s...as comfortable as she can be. Her hours are marked by John. He leaves for hours at a stretch and comes back and attempts, albeit in vain, to coax her into a sense of false security. 

He hasn’t been untoward, yet, and hasn’t done so much as raise his voice. He brings her meals and eats them just across from her and, really, if it wasn’t all under duress, it would be downright pleasant. Very little about the last years of their marriage or their divorce was _pleasant_ and Helen hates how she suspects every little thing about it. He’ll get angry and hurt her, certainly, and it’s simply a matter of when.

Helen isn’t without every resource, though, and she’s secreted a lamp away in a dark corner to use as a weapon if it comes to it. There’s the furniture, too, and even though she’s frightened she’s trying to remember what Will taught her about channelling her adrenaline and using her fear instead of letting it work against her. This was, of course, quite a bit easier when Will was beside her telling her these things and the fear was merely something manufactured as a test and not something tangible as it is now. Life is very rarely easy.

Helen sits up a bit straighter on the corner of the bed when she hears the door swing in and tries to get a glimpse beyond John into the house above the stairs. There’s no such glimpse afforded except to tell her the house is dark and that, perhaps, it might be evening. Knowing John, he could have very well boarded up or blacked out the windows too in order to keep anyone from seeing inside and knowing his secret. It’s another thing she simply wouldn’t put past him at all.

He has flowers, this time, and Helen suppresses a sigh. It’s almost like he intends to woo her in spite of this being the last possible thing she wants and while she’s told him no and he hasn’t pressed, Helen can’t imagine the polite manners will last much longer. His temper, bad before the serum, is impossibly short now and she’s always struck a nerve with him. Helen knows his hot buttons and tries to avoid them as best she can, certainly, but there’s simply no avoiding the fact she doesn’t want to be with him.

“Helen? Won’t even say hello? I brought you a present,” John says airily and he deposits the flowers on the table. Helen shifts to stand and brushes sweaty palms against her trousers. She doesn’t have her medication here, no time to grab it, and the anxiety wells up in her chest every time she sees him or hears his voice. Will could talk her down, he’s quite good at it, but Will isn’t here. Helen’s going to have to do this alone and be strong and while _Will_ certainly thinks she’s capable Helen isn’t quite sure she deserves the faith he puts in her.

He put faith in her to accept his ring and his proposal, after all, and Helen had broken that trust and turned it down. Still, that’s neither here nor there. At the moment, she needs to keep her wits about her and _stay calm_ so that John can’t get the better of her. He knows about her anxiety, her weaknesses, and he will use them against her, there’s no question of it.

“Hello, John. When will you be letting me go home, then?” Her voice is soft and even because the last thing she wants is to upset John and send him flying into a rage. If they can have this little chat without bodily injury, Helen will consider it a success no matter what actually gets said between them. In all truth, she and John probably do have issues to work out though she’d prefer those issues to be hashed out in a lawyer’s office and not, say, in a dungeon. Beggars can’t be choosers.

“Come now, Helen. You know we have a reason for being here,” John drawls and Helen takes in a sharp breath in a vain attempt to calm herself. John circles around behind her and his hands are gentle at her shoulders even if she automatically flinches at the mere thought of him touching her, much less the reality of it. Once, John touching her sent a flutter of excitement through her belly and made her feel alive. Now it merely makes her want to twist away and hide.

It hadn’t always been bad, she and John. They’d met when she was young and he was charming, engaging and more than interested in her brains. Helen had been grateful for that, honestly, because most men didn’t look past the long blonde hair and the big blue eyes to see her intellect and John had. He always had. She’d fallen for him easily enough and it was just a given among their group at Oxford that she and John would marry and be quite happy together. And they were, for a time. The happiest Helen had ever been was on her wedding day and the happiest John had ever been was a toss-up between that day and the day of Ashley’s birth. He’d doted on Ashley, loved her, and had honestly been a good father before things went decidedly-sour.

But they had soured. The serum they’d injected at Oxford had undesirable side effects and while it kept them from aging and getting ill, it’d made Helen anxious and a prisoner of her own fears and it’d made John erratic and angry. What once was a caress became a blow and sometimes without any real warning. Helen hopes he has control over it but if the serum’s caused him to develop this new talent, this teleporation, Helen doesn’t hold out much hope that his temper’s calmed and she’s actually safe.

“Be with me again, Helen. I’ve changed.” His breath is soft against her ear and his lips caress the shell of it, traveling a lazy path down her neck and to her shoulder. Helen stands stock still for fear of what he might do and John seems to take it as encouragement, hands slipping down from her shoulders to cup her breasts. Helen hates the way her body has always been a traitor for John Druitt and she wonders if perhaps it’s simply because he was the first man she’d truly loved. There’d been others, certainly, but he’d been the first one she’d loved and so influential for the first part of her adult life. She’ll always react to him in some way or fashion even if she doesn’t particularly want to. Helen closes her eyes and shakes her head, trembling with fear.

“I don’t want this, John, and you don’t want this marred by taking me by force. You want me willingly, I know you do, and I won’t give it. Please stop. Please?” His hands tighten against her breasts, fingers pressing in hard enough to bruise, and Helen doesn’t dare move for fear that something worse is coming. John is lightning fast when his hand slides from her breast to wrap around her hips and press her back against him, his arm an iron band keeping her from escape.

“It doesn’t matter if you want it or not, Helen, you know I’ll have it anyway. I just want you begging for it before I give it to you. Trust me, this will be easier if you simply _cooperate_. I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. You’re simply far too stubborn for your own good, my darling wife, and I hope I can drive that stubbornness from you. I really hope I don’t have to use force. It would be a shame to mark up that pretty face.”

Helen nods, slowly, and panic closes over her when John’s hand slides up to close around her throat. There’s a few moments of struggling to breathe, of feeling like a fish flopping on the sand, and then everything is cool, quiet, and blissfully black.

***

When Helen wakes, the room is dark. It seems her rejection has made it where she’s not allowed to have light any longer and while she’d complained about being confined, at least the light had allowed her a chance to read the books he’d left in her little prison and given her something to while away the hours. Now, there is nothing, and any stimulation she gets will be solely from John. She wonders if that’s by design, if he intends to simply drive her mad and by doing so drive her into his arms but Helen has steeled her resolve. She knows the simplest way out of this particular trap is to give herself to him but it feels like a betrayal of herself, not to mention Will. Helen has never used her body to get what she wants, not like this, and she’s not about to start simply because she’s frightened.

She imagines Will would understand. She’s under duress and in the shadow of a very real danger. Any sex she has here would be coerced, even if John’s not taking it from her kicking and screaming, and Will would be more than understanding. Still, it’s not what Helen wants and, deep down, she knows it isn’t what John wants either. His warped fantasy of them involves a willing Helen and when she doesn’t comply, he’ll strike her, but he won’t force himself on her. It’s a blow to his ego.

Helen isn’t entirely sure when she started thinking like Will but given it occupies her mind in the dark, she’s not entirely sure she wants to give it up. What _would_ Will do in this situation? How would he work the angles to break himself free? Will isn’t physically a match for most men. He’s a strong runner, yes, but he’s slim and easily overpowered in a fight. Will uses his brains, something which Helen has in excess, and she can do this. She _will_ do this, if only for the chance to see Will again and apologize profusely.

Helen is uncertain how much time passes when she hears John’s footsteps down the stairs once more but based on how heavy they are, he’s still cross with her. She doesn’t have a mirror to check but she’s absolutely certain she’s got bruises around her neck where he’d choked her the last time and she suspects there’s bruises on her breasts too. The dark has her at a disadvantage.

He brings light, though, and it has her blinking owlishly for a moment while her eyes adjust. He’s strewn a gown across the bed, an evening gown, and Helen has to wonder if he intends them to go out. If they go out and Will’s alerted the authorities, perhaps her face will be seen and someone will tip them off and find her. She has to keep faith in that. John’s in black tie even if the tie and shirt are undone and he waves at the dress.

“You’ll put it on after you’ve had a bath.” Helen knows there’s a bathroom, yes, but the only time she’s been allowed to use it has been with John standing just outside the door. She imagines the same will hold true for the shower and as much as she hates the idea of him listening to her in such an intimate situation she wants to be clean much, much more than that.

“Do you remember when we’d first started dating and I simply couldn’t be apart from you?” It’s soft and conversational and Helen nods and murmurs her agreement under her breath as she walks toward the bathroom. It’s best to keep John in a good mood like this than to provoke him again and if he wants to make small talk about days past, she’s happy enough to oblige him. John’s finished unbuttoning his shirt, inexplicably, and Helen pauses in the doorway of the bathroom and chances looking back over her shoulder.

“John? What...I assure you, I can shower alone. There’s no way I’m going to escape from a bathroom with no windows that’s surrounded by concrete block.” It’s not cheeky (at least Helen doesn’t think it is) and John doesn’t seem to react other than to laugh and push his shirt back over his shoulders.

“Yes, but at Oxford, I used to wash your hair for you. This is meant to be like those days, Helen, so you’ll remember what we had.”

Oh. Dear. God.

***

The trouble with tracking a teleporter is that they don’t leave a trace. No need for travel receipts when you can go wherever you want with just a thought and Will doesn’t have the first idea on how to track Druitt by conventional means. He hopes Ashley will lend them an advantage, at least, since she grew up with the guy. Will’s pretty sure that this is the longest he’s ever waited at the airport for anyone to arrive, though, and thinks that O’Hare at rush hour might be quicker.

He eases up to the curb when he spots Ashley’s bright blonde hair and equally bright blue bag. She didn’t check anything, it doesn’t look like, which is good. They’re in more than a hurry and she can buy new if she needs something. Will is more than happy to foot the bill for that himself if need be; the important thing is tracking Druitt and finding Helen and he suspects Ashley will agree.

“Have any ideas where he might have taken her?” Ashley laughs, short and sharp, and shakes her head. Apparently she finds his devotion to the task at hand amusing and Will’s mouth turns down in a frown. Not...exactly. Not when it’s the love of his life alone, scared and quite possibly in danger. Then again, inappropriate laughter is often a stress response and he can’t deny Ashley must be stressed. It’s her parents, no matter how insane one or both of them might be now.

“Hold on, Willster. I don’t even know what time zone I’m in right now, much less where my batshit insane dad might have magically spirited my mom off to. Food and coffee first and we’ll work from there? I’ve got a couple ideas about where they might have gone. He...he’s irrational, but he’s my dad. My dad’s always been crazy about my mom whether we mean crazy in love or flipping insane crazy,” Ashley says, shrugging.

“So it’s my guess he’ll probably take her somewhere that means something to him or their relationship.” It makes sense, really, and it was something Will had considered himself. He just doesn’t have the insight into Helen and John’s relationship that Ashley has and as Will navigates from the airport to somewhere they can stop and eat, he imagines this might be a good time to ask her about it.

“You never had an idea they were like this as a kid?” Ashley doesn’t look at him but he can tell she shakes her head slightly. She traces her fingers through where the condensation has fogged the passenger’s side window and her words are almost too low to be audible.

“No. My dad...my dad loved me. Every soccer game. Every single one, he was there, he was cheering the loudest. Even if he was running for office or working late, he was always there. If I said jump, my dad asked me how high and what shoes. Man, Will, I know it’s hard to believe but when I was a little girl, my dad would have tea parties with me and wear princess crowns. He loved me. I think he loved Mom too but it’s harder to remember.

“She quit her job when I was in high school. She didn’t want to be a surgeon anymore and wanted to spend all her time getting me ready for college, or so she said. She took up the painting then too, something to fill the days, but it all kind of went to shit then. They tried to hide the fighting from me but I could hear the arguments whenever I was home and I tried...never to be home. I wish I’d been here. I didn’t find out he was beating her until I came home for winter break my freshman year of college.”

Ashley pauses and Will doesn’t say anything to coax her on; this is painful and she needs to tell it at her own speed. He imagines she probably hasn’t ever had a chance to really talk about it with anyone considering her mother’s too close to the situation and Ashley isn’t the kind of woman to get close to anyone herself. She lived a solitary life, both before and after the Tesla and Worth incident, and Will’s probably the only port in a storm when it comes to this. He turns into the parking lot of a clean, if older, diner and parks the car. He shuts it off, but makes no move to exit.

“He could have killed her and I wasn’t even there half the time because I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t deal with my perfect dad being someone...twisted and dark. I didn’t know anything about the drugs or the other illegal stuff, just about what he was doing to Mom, but it was just so radically different that I couldn’t and refused to process it. I should have done more so she didn’t have to go through that.”

Will risks reaching out and touching Ashley’s shoulder lightly and when she doesn’t flinch, he squeezes it. Platitudes probably aren’t going to go over well and, really, what does someone even say to something like that? Sorry you were selfish and your mom got hurt? Let’s go kick your dad’s ass? There’s nothing, really, and instead he just waits until it seems like Ashley’s in possession of herself again and moves to get out of the car.

If it’d been Helen with him, he’d have opened the door for her and wrapped an arm around her waist but Ashley’s an independent creature and would more than likely break his wrist just for thinking about it. She makes her way to a booth in the back and Will silently approves of that. They’ll have a lot more room to work and be much less likely to be disturbed while they do it.

Once coffee and food (a stack of pancakes for Ashley and a sandwich for him) appear on the table, Ashley pulls a handwritten list from her pocket. It’s written on an American Airlines notepad in a messy, loopy scrawl and while Ashley’s pretty neat and organized, Will knows that handwriting. It’s a slightly-neater cousin to Helen’s and it makes him miss her enough that he touches it lightly and hopes Ashley doesn’t notice tears pricking his eyes. He’s got to find her. No matter what.

“I don’t know where they might go in England, but Uncle James will. But we used to have a cabin in Whistler when I was a kid and my dad loved to ski. Still loves it, I guess, but who knows what prison can do to a man’s...tastes. Anyway, the only other guess I have is that maybe they went back to our old house in Old City. Lot of bad memories in that house but we lived there for a long time. Still, seems risky. They know his face.”

Will nods and circles the Whistler address. “Where is this house? Is this a cabin that’s fairly isolated or is this near the city itself? He’s going to want to keep your mother hidden until he’s won her over, probably, and if she’s resisting, he’s going to want to keep her quiet and out of sight as much as he can. Given his particular gift, we don’t want to spook him, but I’m not sure if he can teleport while carrying much in the way of supplies. There’s a chance he’s still going into town for food and with the transient tourist population, he might blend.”

Then again, Druitt’s tall, distinctive and his face has been plastered all over the US news. Will isn’t sure about the Canadian outlets but maybe they ought to keep it quiet and see if Druitt will show before alerting them; surprise was of the essence when someone could move the way John could.

“The bitch about this is that he knows our faces. I don’t have anyone at the Bureau I trust with Helen’s life but I was thinking a bait and switch? Maybe let’s get him tailing you, if he’s in Whistler, and while he does, I can try and loop my way back to the house and see if I can find Helen? As long as he doesn’t spot me, maybe we’ve got a chance at tricking him. He’s bound to get overconfident and make a mistake and when he does, we’ll be ready.”

Ashley laughs, short and sharp, and tears off the sheet with the address on it and pushes it toward Will. “Trust me, I know how to bait and switch. PI, remember? I’ll pretend to be with a friend, someone he doesn’t recognize, and it’ll drive him insane until he can figure out whether or not it’s me. You’ve just got to be invisible, G-man. I know you’re hotshot profiler and all that shit but if we spook him and lose my mom on some goose chase...”

It’s not an idle threat, exactly, but Will nods. Too much hangs in the balance to fuck this up. 

“Back to the airport then. Separate flights, no sense to connect us together. Let’s assume he’s watching us at all times and try not to cross paths except in a crowd. Sound good?”

***

It’s late in the season so while there’s still snow on the ground, Whistler isn’t as busy as usual. Will’s flight had been later than Ashley’s by design; give her some time to be seen around town and maybe spotted by Druitt before Will ever shows to track down Helen and this crazy plan might just work. Will, for his part, tugs a Jays cap low down over his brow and tries to look as nondescript as possible.

He’s like a live wire on the inside, though, nerves frayed and strung out on too little sleep and worry. Before Helen, back when he’d been in graduate school and at the Bureau, Will barely slept. He lived on caffeine, mostly, and the thrill of a good puzzle and any sleep he got was snatched in glorified catnaps at odd hours. The psychologist in him chalked it up to too much latent arousal and subclinical cyclothymia but, truth was, Will didn’t really have anything to live for other than the puzzle.

But with Helen, usually, he slept like a rock. She didn’t sleep well anyway but with Will, at least, she slept some. She probably wasn’t sleeping at all. She’d been without anti-anxiety drugs for days now and was in one of the most frightening situations her mind could ever create. Will ached for her, not just for himself to know she was safe, but to soothe her and ease some of that fear. Maybe she didn’t want to see him but maybe the whole situation superseded anything that was wrong between them personally. Once he had her back, they could work on repairing what was wrong.

He doesn’t have a bag except a carry on so there’s no stopping at the baggage carousel. For most people, that’s a good thing, but for Will, he likes seeing people and observing his surroundings. You can learn a lot about a place through the airport and much of what he sees today is business travel. Few bags, if any, nice suits and walking with a lot of purpose. These aren’t people who want to stop and chat, not that Will’s interested in that.

He stops for coffee and strikes up a conversation with the barista. New to the area, looking for something semi-permanent as a second home, any good realtors? Turns out, there’s plenty of realtors all through Vancouver and Whistler too and after he rents a car, he’s got a nice little list to start with. The realtors help him with maps and layouts of neighborhoods and he’s got the address Ashley gave him. While it’d be stupid to actually be keeping Helen in a house she knows, he doesn’t put it past John, and depending on how he delivered her, there’s a chance she doesn’t know where she is. Even if she does know, it’s not like she’s been able to get a message out and he _knows_ she would. No matter what’s going on personally, Helen would contact him.

Will has to keep believing that. Until he knows otherwise, he’s operating under the assumption that Helen still wants him and she’s just scared and cagey about it. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, anyway.

It’s the truth until proven otherwise.

***

Helen gets through dinner without any incident and even though her hands are shaking, John thankfully doesn’t call attention to it. Instead, he’s utterly charming about books and plays and things Helen hasn’t cared to discuss in ages. She and Will have an amazing relationship, yes, but it’s not nearly as cultural as she and John tended to be. She and Will are much more playful in their dealings. Helen prefers that, prefers the escape and prefers not having to play up to some lofty ideal in her personal relationship. It’s something she never had with John, since she had to be a politician’s wife and flawless nearly all the time.

After the meal’s finished, Helen hopes John intends to take his leave and when he turns out the lights, she sighs. She misses having the light, yes, but him dousing it always means she’ll be left alone and that’s infinitely preferable. It’s easier to give into the anxiety and purge it so she can be strong when she’s with John. He doesn’t seem to be leaving, though, and Helen manages a shaky inquiry into why.

“You’re not...going back upstairs?” John shakes his head and lifts her hand to his mouth, turning it over to lay kisses against her wrist. Helen closes her eyes and it take everything within her not to recoil. John could be kind, yes, but it was always just the quiet before a storm. The blows always came and Helen isn’t sure which lust of his needed to be slaked more: lust for sex or violence. Violence always was a harbinger of sex with John, anyway, so perhaps the two are inherently linked.

“No, love. I’m planning to seduce my wife.” Helen snatches her wrist back from him, trying to put distance between she and John but even with the table between them, he closes the distance far too quickly. His arm slides around her and presses her flush to him and holds her still; Helen can feel how aroused he is and while she’s always appealed to his ego to keep him from forcing her, she doesn’t know if that will work this time. He seems determined, even if she fights, and the cloying panic rising in her throat makes everything shut down and go to black. She tries to think of Will, of Ashley, of anything that might give her strength but her heart’s going too fast and she feels like oxygen isn’t getting to her lungs.

“You can’t seduce the unwilling. Let me go, John. Please? Please don’t force me, I’ll hate you forever. You want me to love you, don’t you? You can’t expect me to love you if you take what I don’t choose to give you.”

John presses his finger against her lips. “Shh. You’ll like it, once we’re started. I always knew just how to touch you, Helen.” He pushes down the front of her gown and Helen snaps her head quickly, unthinking, and headbutts him. It buys her time even if he’s angry as a bull now and she scrambles up toward the stairs, hoping that he’s left the door unlocked by some miracle of miracles.

He hasn’t. Nothing ever comes that easily.

“Helen, you’re making this more difficult than it has to be.” Helen chances a look at him and sees bright blood streaming from his nose and down his chin, making him look more a madman than she already knows him to be. It seems appropriate, somehow, that she’s rattled his cool facade and made him show his true colors for once. It seems right that he’s finally showing her the beast that he’s been struggling to hide all these years.

It’s not quite the way it was before. During their marriage, Helen had been cowed and hid from him, hid what he was doing to her from everyone else. She was clumsy, she hadn’t been eating right - any number of things to hide the fact that John expended his excess of rage in a trellis of welts across her body. She was afraid and, moreso, she wanted to protect Ashley. Ashley loved her father dearly and, for all Helen could see, John loved Ashley. That rage never turned on her and she never had to bear the brunt of love twisted and turned so that everything was hard edges and harsh words. Ashley was spared the worst of it, in no small part owing to Helen’s determination to keep her in the dark.

But Ashley isn’t here now to be that buffer and while Helen’s stronger, much stronger, she doesn’t know how long she can play cat and mouse with John. There’s furniture in here, at least, and provided he doesn’t try to use his gift, Helen might be able to get a few whacks in here and there. Her hands close around a floor lamp and swing it in a wide arc, catching John at his knees and buying her a few moments...to do what, exactly? There’s no way out except a key that he has and angering him further is only going to have the worst sort of consequences for her.

“Helen, you don’t want to do this. You’ve made me have to take other measures that I hadn’t anticipated.” John closes the distance between them quickly; even injured, his stride is a good two times longer than hers and when he closes the distance and lays his hands about her throat, panic starts to well. There’s nobody who’d hear her if she cried out and if he wants to kill her, he’ll kill her without any real resistance on her end. 

Helen doesn’t particularly believe in God. As a girl, she’d been a good Anglican and gone to church with her father and grandmother but after about twelve or so, science held much more fascination than anything that could be learned from an old priest with even older books. She was much more inclined to listen to her teachers and headmaster, especially when those were exchanged for professors at university.

But now, it’s like all those years of being agnostic at best and atheist at worse have been wiped away because Helen is begging and pleading with God to have mercy. She has a daughter she wants to see again and a boyfriend she’s botched things terribly with. There’s the children at the library she works at, bright shining faces who want nothing more than to hear one more story from Miss Maggie.

Helen’s not willing to give it up without a fight and as the world goes first dizzy and then black, she kicks and struggles and tries to reach every soft bit of flesh she can. If she can make him hurt, maybe he’ll stop, and she won’t have to endure this any longer. The easy alternative is to just give into him, let him seduce her and Helen knows that means two things. One, he’ll have a hold on her that she simply won’t be able to shake if she gets out of here and two, it’s a betrayal. Not of Will, necessarily, but of herself. It’s a betrayal to herself to give up and give John that when she’s tried her damndest to move past him for the past few years.

She decides, no matter how badly this ends, John Druitt isn’t fucking her unless he’s just ripped it from her against her will. She hopes (yet again, though that’s proving to be a vain and rapidly dwindling hope) that his ego is enough to stay his hand and that last indignity won’t be heaped upon her when he’s already humiliated her and brought her low. And, if he hasn’t gotten what he wants yet, perhaps it buys her time so that Will can come to save her.

Will _is_ coming. The alternative simply isn’t fathomable.

***

Ashley thinks she spots her father outside a hardware store and tries to be subtle about putting herself in his line of sight. She doesn’t want to be too obvious; the best way to spook a target is letting them actually see you and that’s something Ashley is all too aware of in her own line of work. Instead, she gives him enough to tease and titillate and maybe he’ll wonder if it was her he saw or some ghost of Ashley.

She hasn’t spoken to him since he went to prison. For someone who was incredibly close to her father for the first years of her life, Ashley has all but cut him out now and she knows it’s hurt him. Still, he hurt her mother when Helen Druitt had done nothing but love him and worship the ground he walked on and no amount of Disney trips and pony rides can make up for that. There’s nothing her father can do now that would erase seeing her mother with black eyes, with bruises around her throat and God only knew where else and it twists the love that Ashley always had for him as a little girl into bitterness and hate.

She tugs her ski hat off and lets her long, blonde hair tumble out so Druitt is sure to see it. That done, she makes her way to a little coffee shop and gets a drink before settling in a window half turned away. Enough where he can see her but possibly not make out her face and luring him into the open is the goal. He won’t want his face known by the townies and there’s just not enough tourists around to mask him; anyone up here this late in the season is more or less a regular and not an incidental. It’s good timing, at the least, and that’s not really something she or Will can consider their doing. Ashley wishes they could. She likes to play the badass when at all possible.

It makes her and Will a good team, though, and she half wonders if she offers him partnership in her business if he’ll join up. He’d be a good PI with his observation skills and Fed training and Ashley would feel a lot safer on some of those jobs if she had someone riding along, much less someone with Will’s expertise. It’s not head-shrinky like his job at the Bureau was, though. There’s nothing really surprising about husbands and wives cheating on each other or politicians taking bribes. Sex and money always lead to corruption, after all, and Ashley knows that first-hand too thanks to some more of her mom’s dubious friends. She’s not sure how someone kind and altruistic like her mother can get wrapped up with some of the worst criminals Ashley’s ever met or read about but, to hear Helen tell it, it hadn’t always been that way.

It hadn’t felt that way to Ashley either. Her father had made a night and day transformation but so had her Uncle James. He was gregarious and loving when she was a child, always with a sweet or a present for her, and it had been so painful to learn he was crippled by a drug addiction. Nothing was enough for James Watson. Cocaine, meth, heroin - everything was about chasing the bigger dragon, getting the bigger high. There were women, too, and men, and Ashley doesn’t really like to think about the fact that so many times the “girlfriend” Uncle James was bringing around was little more than a drug-addled prostitute. She’d always thought the best of him.

And maybe that was the downfall of most people. Maybe people always expected the best from someone, even when they should have been expecting the worst. When it’s someone you love, you gloss over their bad parts and only see the good, even if the good is microscopic. Ashley sees it every day. It’s not just with her mother, though Helen Druitt’s pretty damn blinded to the faults of her friends, but with her clients too. For all the rich, neglected wife wants to catch her husband in the act, it’s not to humiliate him. It’s not to take him to the cleaners in divorce court, unless she’s just got a brilliant attorney. More often than not, a few pretty words from said husband gets him out of the dog house and back in bed and that wife wants to believe he’s changed. It’s going to be different now. It’s going to be better.

And there’s a dark side to that, too, in that if you’re abused too much, you start expecting the worst from the people who are, inherently, good people. It’s like her mother (yet again - when did Helen Druitt become the poster child for everything that’s wrong with the human condition?) and Will. She spent so many years being beaten down by John Druitt that a good man like Will comes along and Helen expects it to just be a trick, a flash of the light, something Will can toy with before he gets bored and moves on.

Ashley isn’t really a big believer in pushing anyone to get married, much less her mother and her way-too-young-for-her boyfriend, but Will’s a good guy. From everything Ashley’s seen, he’s sweet and attentive and there’s not another person in the world when her mother walks into the room. If Helen asked for the moon for a necklace, Will would pull it down and ask if she wanted matching earrings from the stars. But Helen doesn’t expect it. Helen never expects it and Ashley knows that has to frustrate Will when all he’s ever done is be good to her and save her from, well, everything.

Helen before Will was so crippled by anxiety that she barely even left the house. It was something she could get away with, too, considering she could have groceries delivered or keep night hours where she wasn’t likely to run into anyone on accident. She could pretend to be an eccentric artist instead of the strong, smart surgeon that Ashley knew her to be. Ashley knew, knows, that her mother has strength. Nobody could endure what she had the latter years of her marriage without being strong and she hopes that she’s inherited that from her and not her father’s temper; in truth, it’s probably a healthy mix of both.

The coffee is all but gone but Ashley wants to stay where she is. She has a beaten-up magazine to read and while it’s not the best (she doesn’t need tips to get a man, thanks, she can do it on her own) it serves to keep her parked in the window in plain view without really showing her face. She hears her father when he comes in and orders his coffee and wonders if he’s actually going to be so brazen as to come and sit next to her. Her answer is, yeah, he is, because he takes the comfortable chair across from her and touches her knee lightly before speaking.

Ashley bristles; as much as that voice has been a comfort to her for the better part of her life, he’s been such a terror to her mother these past few years that she can’t move past it. Still, she needs to fake it so this will come off without a hitch and buy Will some time to rescue her mom and get them the hell out of Dodge. Or Whistler, if she’s being accurate. Ashley knows as a kid she was never so eager to leave the place, that’s for sure.

“Ashley? Is that you?” Prison hasn’t been kind to John Druitt. He’s thinner than Ashley ever remembers seeing him before and his gray-blue eyes are lined with red. His cheeks are hollow and there’s lines on his face that simply weren’t there a few years back. He doesn’t have hair anymore, either, and while Ashley knows he started shaving as fashion (Well, that’s what he’d told her. In truth, it was probably not to leave DNA around when he was contract killing and brokering drug deals under her mother’s nose.) when he lived at home she suspects, now, that the hair wouldn’t grow back if he tried. 

“Yeah. It’s not like I look any different, Dad,” Ashley bites. She catches a glimpse of his face when she says it and the hurt there is evident. Beneath it all, as twisted as a fuck as John Druitt is, he apparently still loves her. Ashley doesn’t really know what to do with that. She wishes he hated her the way he hates her mother because then, at least, Ashley could close the door on ever having a relationship with him. As it is, there’s that possibility that he might want to have a relationship with her and be the father Ashley knows he can be and it makes her hesitant about doing anything to really burn the bridge. Maybe he could get better. Maybe with a fuckton of therapy and prison and God knows what else, he could be something positive in her life again. 

Hope might be the last thing in the box but it’s probably the most dangerous.

“I haven’t seen you in years, Ashley. My letters all got sent back and I thought you’d moved, or something. They put you in Protection?” They had, yeah, but if he really wanted to get in touch with her, Ashley would have figured out a way. As it was, she was too pissed and hadn’t made any contact with him at all. Sure, he hadn’t tried to _kill_ her like her mother’s other college buddies but nobody fucks with Helen Druitt and comes out with Ashley as an ally. Nobody.

“Yeah. Technically you should be calling me Alana Zimmerman right now, or some shit. Maybe it was MacDonald.” She uses A.L MacDonald for her business and nobody really checks up on it and while her mother might be A-OK with running around sharing a name with her boyfriend, Ashley isn’t a Zimmerman. Will’s sure as fuck not adopting her no matter how things go with her mother because it’s just _creepy_ and Ashley doesn’t really want to be a Druitt anymore. Maybe she should just pick out her own name. Not one the federal government has given her, not one her father gave her, but something that’s uniquely hers. It would be nice, honestly, to have something of her own.

“Ashley, I never stopped loving you. Or your mother, for that matter, but certainly not you. I was good to you and I only ever wanted to be good to you.” Ashley recoils at his words. She wants them to be true. She wants, more than anything, for her father to snap out of crazy town and be _normal_ again but she’s too jaded to trust it. What’s his angle? Is he trying to capture her too, like he did her mother, and keep them in some creepy-ass dungeon and never let them see the light of day? Or is he sincere? Does he mean to make them a family again?

“Might have wanted to keep that in mind when you were beating the shit out of the only person I really love, _Dad_ ,” Ashley spits bitterly, looking at the table, the coffee cup and anywhere but her father’s face. John Druitt’s face. There’s a separation now between the father she loves and John Druitt, criminal mastermind and Ashley intends to keep that separation for as long as it takes to keep from getting hurt by him again.

“What happened between your mother and I had nothing to do with you, Ashley, and very little to do with your mother.” 

He seems cold and firm on that account and it only sets Ashley firmer against him. She’s not entirely convinced he had no control whatsoever because, hey, dear ol’ Dad never laid a hand on _her_ when he was doing God knows what to her mother. There had to have been a choice he made, somewhere along the line, that hurting Helen was A Okay but hurting Ashley was a complete no no. Ashley’s not sure that she likes being the winner of that particular inner struggle but she knows that her mother would do damn near anything to shield her from being hurt, either emotionally or physically, and Ashley can’t imagine what she endured to keep her safe. She thanks her chosen deities every day that her mom is, while prone to panic and not exactly the best in a fight, strong in her own right. It’s something that Ashley thinks got passed on to her because there’s no way in hell she’s attributing her own strength to her father.

“Yeah? Because I’m thinking you went batshit and tried to kill Mom on more than one occasion and probably would have started wailing on me if your ass didn’t get caught and shipped off to jail. And to add to the crazy train, you decided you’d start dealing drugs and killing prostitutes for kicks because God knows we didn’t need the money and you didn’t think maybe some of that massive lack of judgment didn’t have a damn thing to do with you? Really? I mean, come _on_.”

Druitt sets his jaw and damn near growls and Ashley knows that she’s pushed it too far. Will had asked her to stall him, not set him off, and when he makes a reach for her, Ashley knows it’s over. She can’t take him considering he’s got several inches and at least a hundred pounds on her and she doesn’t know how desperate and crazy he is right now and doesn’t want to find out on a personal level. He’s got her mother locked up in some fucking dungeon right now; obviously the guy doesn’t have much to lose.

The only thing Ashley hopes for is that considering this is a public place, maybe he won’t be so stupid as to abduct her here. Years of working PI have made her pretty aware of her surroundings and before cornering Druitt, she’d made sure to flirt with a few college students near the bookshelves and strike up a long, inane conversation with the barista so that someone would remember her face. Young, pretty blonde girl being kidnapped by a tall and scary guy? It’s bound to be memorable, especially since Ashley’s taken every chance to stick out when normally she wants nothing more to blend in. It’s a weird shift in balance and she really hopes it works out in her favor.

Because, deep down, she doesn’t know if the paternal bond is enough to prevent Druitt from offing her if he feels like she can get him into serious shit. She wants to think it is and maybe so, since he hasn’t done it yet -- but yet is a key qualifying statement. His fingers claw into her arm harshly, far more harsh than would look normal in a situation between father and daughter and Ashley feels a sick pull and tingle as she dematerializes.

Well, _fuck._ This just went from bad to worse.

***

Helen isn’t sure when she roused, exactly, but there’s a steady thump at the door at the top of the stairs that gives her a bit of hope. John has a key to this dungeon of theirs and he’d have used it if he wanted in. A thump might mean someone making their way inside that _doesn’t_ have a key, someone like Will or Ashley or even the local authorities. She straightens a bit and moves to sit in the less-broken chair, wanting to look somewhat in possession of her faculties in case it’s someone she doesn’t know.

Only Helen Druitt would be concerned with what the police thought of her after she’d been held hostage in a dungeon for nights on end. As laughable as it is, Helen’s not laughing and she drags her hands through her hair to comb out the tangles to keep herself distracted in case this isn’t her rescue on the way. It could very well be John. John might suspect she’ll find a way to break through and is barricading the door somehow. It might be another of John’s friends from prison or otherwise, seeking to commit more atrocities against her while he’s otherwise disposed. The panic is an ugly thing and Helen tries to fight it.

Sadly, panic isn’t so easy to fight. It’s rather like a weed in a garden at times, choking out all other life until you can’t see the roses or the geraniums or anything of true beauty and the only thing that exists are dark, ugly vines with thorns on them that wend their way around everything else and suck them dry. Helen feels she’s trapped in the midst of a briar patch of her own making and those ugly, frightening feelings choke at any hope she has and try to eliminate it so she can feed them instead. She isn’t going to fall for it this time. The horrors in her own mind can’t compare to anything she’s already endured and she hasn’t broken yet. She’s survived even if it’s been hard and she’s still drawing air into her lungs in spite of John’s desire to stamp that out. She _will_ beat this.

When the door swings in and a sliver of light spills out over the steps, Helen freezes for a moment. John tends to block out all the light with as tall and broad as he is and this figure is slender, albeit tall. The tears that stream down her face are loud and messy and completely unbecoming of an English woman like her but Helen simply can’t help it because it’s _Will_. It’s Will and all she wants is to throw her arms around him and never let go and she’s rooted to the spot instead, trapped by her own emotions.

“Helen, are you all right?” His voice is warm and soft and Helen simply collapses and gives into everything that’s been frightening her ever since John first showed up and took her to the cliffs of Dover. She’s sobbing, shoulders heaving and heart going wild and Will crosses over to her and slides his arms around her as best he can with her seated and him standing. She presses her cheek against his abdomen and sobs out her feelings against the soft material of his shirt. Helen isn’t sure how much time passes like that and all she’s truly aware of is the fact that Will’s slipped his fingers into her hair, petting and comforting her as if nothing ever went wrong.

But things went horribly wrong. She’d denied his proposal out of fear he’d change, for one, and out of fear that John would find out and harm Will somehow. Will is more than capable of handling himself, certainly, but if something happened to him because of her past, Helen would never be able to forgive herself. She’s never done well with blood on her hands and she suspects that, deep down, may even be one of the root causes of her anxiety.

“Better than expected,” Helen manages, breath shallow and tears slowing. If she could get a deep breath, perhaps, she’d feel a good deal better. Will holds her for a few moments longer before pulling away and running his hands over her methodically, checking for injuries. She’s got ribs broken in several places (funny - she hadn’t even noticed until Will started pressing at them) and the ugly green-yellow-purple-gray of old bruises with fresh welts atop them. Her head has a knot that Helen suspects is a half-healed fracture and she’ll need medical attention sooner rather than later. 

Above all, she’s been strong. Three years ago, Helen would have broken down or given in long before now and while she’s breaking in the strong circle of Will’s arms, she feels she’s held herself together better than anyone could ever have believed prior to now. She’s done this on her own, too, because as much as some people might say it’s her love for Ashley or Will that’s carried her through this harrowing ordeal, it’s not. It’s Helen’s own inner strength, her own mind and body and that feels like a battle that’s been long-fought and something she’d never thought she’d achieve. Now, no matter what gets thrown her way, Helen thinks she’ll be able to face it. She might still be frightened, certainly, but she thinks she can pull through with her own wherewithal and not have to rely so heavily on drugs and therapy. She can use them as tools now and not just crutches and the feeling is absolutely liberating. She’s shaken from those thoughts, though, by Will’s voice and she’s a little out of it for a moment before she can parse what he’s actually asking her.

“What else happened, Helen? What’s here that I can’t see?” Will’s voice is urgent and Helen knows she can’t dodge this question. It’s hard to admit to what John did to her past the beatings, though, and when she tries to form the words they simply won’t come out. Not right now when she still needs to show her best face to the world. Will seems to accept that, more or less, and holds her close even though there’s the danger of John coming back at any moment. Imprudent, perhaps, but precisely what Helen needs. 

She craves that sort of physical comfort, long withheld by her own father and never really given often by John even before he’d gone mad. They’d had plenty of sex, certainly, and loved one another but simple touches like hugs or brushes of hands back against cheeks, that had been unheard of. Serviceable affection to keep up appearances was common enough currency between she and John Druitt but she’d never been able to simply crawl into his arms and cry out her tears the way she feels like she can with Will. 

It is something that she needs even if she’s too stubborn to admit it to herself half the time. She takes solace in his comfort for a little while longer and tries to memorize just how he feels so she can learn it all over again; it hasn’t been that long but she wants to stamp out every bad memory of John with a good one of Will and try to perform some sort of alchemy on her battered psyche. Lead into gold, hate into love. It could make a fortune if she knew how to market it correctly.

***

Will wants to drive a bullet directly between John Druitt’s eyes. Whatever might have gone sour between he and Helen doesn’t really matter right now when she’s trembling and in tears of relief just from seeing him. Each bruise makes him sick to his stomach and he’s afraid it goes past bruises and Helen’s scared to tell him. He knows that it can be a difficult thing to talk about sexual abuse from his work with the FBI but knowing and experiencing that on a personal level trying to get Helen to open up to him, it’s excruciating. He doesn’t know the extent of it and the part of him that’s her boyfriend and still loves her doesn’t want to know. The part of him that’s on the job needs to.

It’s not exactly a rock and a hard place that Will’s ever wanted to be stuck between. 

They need to get moving but they’re not going to be able to get much of anywhere with Helen distraught and two seconds from a full blown panic attack and Will doesn’t want to risk giving her Xanax and impairing her judgment in case things don’t go as planned. He hopes that Ashley still has Druitt distracted and far enough away from the house not to be a threat but there’s no real way of knowing that to be the case, especially if Druitt decides to use his powers. They’re still inaccurate and draining but he’s learning control and there’s been at least one instance of a cross-country jump. He might even be able to go further and when Helen’s safe and sound and Druitt’s in the ground, Will means to ask.

He knows, deep down, that this isn’t going to end peacefully. It’s never an ideal situation when dealing with a crazed criminal and any rationality Druitt used to have is long gone thanks to his experimentation with the serum. Just like with Helen’s anxiety, the serum warped his brain and made him angry, prone to flights of fancy and brutally violent. Throughout the latter part of their marriage, there were signs of escalation from verbal to actual physical abuse and Will wishes Helen hadn’t been so scared and stubborn, that Ashley had been able to see it sooner, that the doctors and nurses and cops hadn’t been so fucking oblivious to the situation. It’s in the past now, though, and Will brings himself back to the present.

“We need to go, Helen. Now. My car’s parked a few blocks down in hopes Druitt won’t be able to recognize it.” It’s a rental anyway, which lends it an air of anonymity, but if Druitt catches a glimpse of them getting in and knows what to look for, that anonymity is worse than useless. Helen shifts to stand up on shaky legs when there’s a flash of light (phosphorous tinged in red, if Will had to guess and a lingering tang of ozone in the air to go with it) along with a little _zort_ noise and Druitt’s standing in the entryway with Ashley by the hair. She’s kicking and fighting, at least, and Will pulls his gun and levels it at him.

“Let her go, Druitt. This can go one of two ways and I think you’re going to want it to go the way where Helen, Ashley and I walk out that door and never see you again. The alternative is messy and we don’t want to go that way.” Druitt laughs and Will feels a shiver go down his spine; he’s faced down murderers, rapists, drug dealers and everything in between but there’s something chilling about the calm demeanor and the way he can grab his own daughter by the throat and use her as a bargaining chip. It’s not supposed to work that way. 

It’s really no wonder Abby got the fucking chills when she interrogated him three years ago and Will would be less than useless if he didn’t have the mandate of “Protect Helen,” flashing neon behind his eyes. There’s no other goal or objective and the slip from lover to protector is absolute. Protect the asset. Will shifts to put himself between Helen and Druitt and while he’s not much in hand to hand, he hopes he can talk Druitt down and end this without any more violence. It’s more for Helen and Ashley’s sakes than Druitt’s. Will’s not that altruistic.

“Let Ashley go.”

Her voice is shaking but it still rings clear in the empty room. There’s steel there, for all that Helen can be fragile, and Will feels his whole body tense in anticipation. It distracts Druitt, too, and it’s enough that Ashley gets leverage to wrench away and twist his arm in a way that results in a sickening crunch of bone. It’s enough to piss him off, at least, and Will didn’t really want this to go so badly that one of them got hurt (aside from Druitt, that is, because this fucker hurt Helen and Will has nothing for him even if he should be professional right now) and Ashley’s right in the lion’s jaws. Druitt manages to get his uninjured hand around Ashley’s throat, squeezing tightly and she kicks and struggles in a vain attempt to get away. 

Will doesn’t have a shot. He wishes he did because he’d put that bullet right in Druitt’s brain but he doesn’t without risking Ashley and that’s not a risk he’s willing to take. Protect the asset. There’s no way he’d ever try this shot unless he was a military sharpshooter and even still, it’s a hell of a risk. It’s not fair. In the movies, this kind of shot is easy to make and everyone goes home healthy and happy. 

“Shoot, Will!” Helen’s voice is piercing in his ear and he wants to follow through but Druitt’s managed to shift Ashley’s body directly in front of his as some kind of fucked up human shield. He has very little to lose and he could just teleport away so Will’s not sure what he’s playing at right now. Druitt’s a madman. It could be absolutely anything. He doesn’t get very long to speculate before Druitt makes his desires plain in a low, chilling voice.

“I suppose you expect me to start pleading for ridiculous things like helicopters and gobs of cash, don’t you? Something bordering on mad like my own private island and immunity? I’m not nearly so megalomaniacal. I only want simple things, Will, and some of them are the same things you want. It’s a simple conflict of interest. I want my family,” he murmurs, pulling Ashley closer to ensure Will can’t get a shot, “My daughter and my wife and you, apparently, are going to persist in fucking my wife. Hence, conflict.”

If Will thought for a second that Helen would be safe if he gave up their relationship, he would. Maybe that’s not exactly the Disney prince thing to do but Helen’s more important than any relationship Will shares with her and if she could be safe and sound just because Will decided to leave, he’d do it, and he’d hope that Helen understood that. That said, he doesn’t think that throwing in the towel on this is going to keep Helen safe. Druitt’s got a twisted idea about love and romance and he’s pretty sure that Helen going back to that nightmare will erase what little progress she’s made with her anxiety. He’s not going to let that happen. Never.

“Really, though, Helen, can this little boy please you? I really want to know. I was the first man you ever loved and the first you ever spread those pretty legs for. Anything he’s gotten from you, I had first. Every time he’s with you, he has to remember that it was me who broke you in and me that you have to compare him to. I’m sure he comes up wanting in every single way, doesn’t he? Can’t imagine you feel _anything_ with him that you haven’t already felt with me a thousand times over.”

Druitt seems pleased enough to posture for a little while and Will keeps his gun trained on him, looking for the opening. He just needs Druitt to shift Ashley a few inches and it’ll be close but he’ll have the shot he needs to kill him outright and spare her. Still, he doesn’t have it yet and Ashley’s gone red and now her lips are turning blue. They don’t have time to dawdle even if Druitt’s acting like he does. Then again, he’s got the stopwatch clutched between his hands, squeezing the life from her moment by moment.

“Bloody stop it, John,” Helen says, rushing toward him and away from the little safety that Will had afforded her with his body. It happens so fast that he can’t hold her back and she’s clawing and wailing at him, long, elegant fingernails tearing blood-red furrows in Druitt’s pale skin. Helen’s not really very methodical about it and she attacks everywhere she can: arms, neck, face. She gouges deep beneath one of his eyes and it must hurt enough that he loosens his grip on Ashley and makes to attack her mother, one knee coming up to strike Helen directly in the stomach. It’s enough that Ashley gets a chance to move away and move back in, this time with a heavy lamp in her hand. She hits him on the base of his skull and he goes down but Will still shoots him just to be sure. There’s no way he’s going to risk Druitt getting up even angrier than before. No way.

Time seems to stop once he’s dead and the menace that had loomed larger than life seems small, somehow, in death. He’s not bleeding much and that’s good because this is in no way a kill in the line of duty and while he and Ashley have gun permits in their own respective states, they don’t in Canada. It’s going to go badly if they can’t cover it up and so Will decides that’s what they’ll do. It’s not honest and it’s not _his_ way but if it affords Helen and Ashley some protection, he’ll do it.

“Helen, get the shower curtain from the bathroom. Ashley, you’re going to have to help me lift him.” Ashley instantly moves into action, calm and collected, but Helen’s frozen to the spot. As much as he loves her, Will wishes her anxiety could just clear out for the next hour or two so that he can figure out how the hell to get her out of the country without a passport or identification. Private plane might be an option and Helen’s got the funds to bankroll it but still. It’s not a good option at all. Besides, they need to bury Druitt and get the fuck out of here before anyone suspects something’s gone wrong. Very very important.

“Helen. Move. There’s time to panic later and right now I need you to be strong for us. We’ve got to dispose of this body and figure out a way to get you home without arousing any suspicions. Once we’re on the plane, you can break down all you want but right now you need to be strong and not freak out on me. I know you can do this. Take a few deep breaths and tell me that you can do this?” 

Her affirmation that she can, in fact, do this is low and just above a whisper but it’s good enough for Will, especially when she leaves the room and goes through the rest of her assigned tasks without so much as a word. She’s trembling, but quiet, and Will reaches over and squeezes her hand lightly to reassure her before wrapping up Druitt’s body. He looks at Ashley, who seems much more reliable by far and wonders if she’s ever had to hide a dead body before. Maybe it’s better just not to ask.

“We need to bury him under the concrete in here,” Ashley says, “Like a vault. That’ll keep animals from digging him up and giving us a whole bunch of fucking problems. Can’t we just call the locals and explain the whole situation? I’m pretty sure they’d give Mom a pass since she just got held captive and raped and who knows what other fucked up shit.” Both Helen and Will shake their heads. There’s too much that wasn’t by the books about this and neither wants to risk the other going to prison for something that needed to happen.

“No, Ashley, we’ll cover it up and never speak of it again.” Druitt’s got tools stored in the house and while it takes a while to uncover enough to lower his body down and fill it back in with concrete, it’s not so long that Will thinks someone might come sniffing around. It plays to their advantage that nobody really knew where Druitt was staying or that this house was occupied and it seems the nearby neighbors are all just seasonal and not staying in their houses full time. It’s as ideal as a fucked up thing like this can be and Will thinks they’re lucky. More than lucky.

So lucky it’s actually criminal.

***

They all take showers before they leave the house and buy new clothes to change into. Helen’s hair gets dyed, dark this time the way it used to be when Will first met her and Ashley’s gets cut short and accompanied by green and pink candy-colored streaks. She also adds a nose ring for flavor and while Helen rolls her eyes, Will feels like it’s a good idea. They also make an executive decision not to fly.

There’s no bullshitting border patrol, certainly, but he and Ashley have passports and they hide Helen in a makeshift false trunk that Will thinks is probably going to cost him the deposit at the rental company. Once they’re well and truly clear of the US-Canada border, they pull over and let Helen back out and from as pale and shaken as she looks, it’s a good thing. Will gives her an easy little smile and she and Ashley trade seats so that Helen can sit in front with Will, her hand sneaking out to squeeze his as they make their way down into Washington and cross-country. It’s going to take forever, certainly, but the trip is a nice way to decompress after what happened and helps them leave it behind before they get home. There’s no sense in bringing all that _home_ with them.

They’re somewhere in Kansas when Will gets a call from Abby who says, gee, did you know that they tracked Druitt to Canada but haven’t found him since? That maybe a couple people saw him skulking around Whistler but he just disappeared? Will holds his breath for almost longer than humanly possible before hearing that the Canadian authorities searched the Whistler property and didn’t find anything of note and there had been nobody around to confirm whether or not the house had been recently occupied. Maybe they’re not permanently out of the woods since there’s no real way to completely cover up a dead body but it’s enough that Will feels relieved. So long as he, Helen and Ashley are never questioned, they’re good. They’ll be good.

They track north through Illinois to drop Ashley off and while she tries to act like it’s not a big deal, Will can see how shiny and wet her eyes are and how tightly she hugs Helen. She catches Will off to the side and reminds him to take care of Helen unless he wants to have his face kicked in and Will laughs and assures her that he will. He has been for the last three years, after all, and he’s pretty sure that’s never going to change. 

Since trains are a little less stringent on ID than planes, Will and Helen manage to finish the last leg of their cross-country trip via train and it’s nice not to be switching off driving and to just relax for a little while. Helen likes to sit in front of the wide windows and watch the scenery pass by and Will finds her there after a few hours. He’s needed the time to gather his thoughts but now he wants to talk to her in a place where she can’t really run away from him.

“Hi,” he says, waving a little and she laughs and says hello back. Her eyes haven’t left the window, though, and Will reaches for her hand and holds it in his before speaking again. It’s her left and that’s intentional but he has no idea if Helen will get how and why it is. Maybe she’s forgotten entirely about the proposal in all the drama that’s happened afterward; Will would, but he tends to block painful memories. The proposal was definitely painful.

“I wanted to talk...about us. I guess you weren’t ready to take the whole marriage step when I asked and I’m sorry but I wanted to make sure that there was still an us before discussing what I could do to get you ready to be with me like that. You don’t have to answer right now. You don’t have to even have all the answers someday. I just want to keep talking to you and knowing where your head is because, God, I love you, Helen. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone and I want to be with you. No matter what it takes.”

Helen turns to look at him and squeezes his hand lightly. She looks a little more unburdened than she had for the duration of this impromptu road trip and Will is grateful for that. At least he’s hit her at the right place to discuss...this. Whatever it is or will be between them. She draws his hand to her lips and kisses it lightly, lips running over his knuckles as if she’s trying to learn them again and she sighs and drops her hands into her lap, releasing his. It’s difficult for her and Will doesn’t even have to hear her words to know that; it’s etched on her face.

“My reasons for turning down your proposal had mostly to do with John.” Her voice is steady and clear and Will thinks she’s probably telling the truth. Helen can’t lie for shit and she has blatantly obvious tells; none of them are evident right now. He can’t help but smile to know that maybe this whole proposal disaster doesn’t mean they’re finished and they still have a relationship that, while it needs work, is something that’s eventually _going_ to work.

“So, if I asked you to marry me right now, what would you say?” He’s equal parts hopeful and giddy, eyes lighting up, and he must look eager and ridiculous because Helen laughs and swats at him lightly. His whole body is primed for her answer and he’s a runner, barely in the blocks. All he needs is one little word and then he’ll be off, legs pumping and lungs screaming and tearing off toward a spectacular finish.

“I would tell you to ask me again later when you have a ring in hand. I’m not the sort of lady to say yes without seeing my diamond.”

Will wishes he’d brought it with him but it hadn’t been on the list when clearing out to go save her. He settles instead for pulling her into his arms and watching the scenery go by and thinks that this is pretty close to perfect.

Perfect can come later.

  
_One Year Later_  


Will’s never really been one for making a fuss over anything but he feels like Helen deserves it if nothing else. She’s off getting ready somewhere and he’s fiddling with his tie and fussing at his tux, hoping that when she comes down the aisle in a few minutes, she’ll see who she wants to be with for the rest of her life.

It’s a first marriage for Will and a second for Helen, certainly, but he likes to think that it’s going to be a new experience for both of them because it’s with each other and nobody else. The past isn’t forgotten by any stretch of the imagination but the future that they forge will be one together, arm in arm, and Will doesn’t ever want to go through life without Helen by his side. He’s just idealistic enough to believe this might work between them simply because he loves her so much and he feels like it’s mutual on her side too. They’ll make it work. It has to work.

When the organ strikes up and begins to play, Will’s heart leaps into his throat and when he sees her, he’s absolutely gone. She’s perfect in every single way, all the way from the hand-beaded veil to the end of her train and the ivory sets off her dark curls in a way that Will can’t help but stare at. He’s never going to get his fill of looking at this woman. Never.

The vows end up being a blur. They’d agreed that Helen could and should come out of protection now that most of her enemies really are dead and gone and it’s not lost on him that the first presentation of husband and wife is going to be _Helen_ Zimmerman and not her false name. Zimmerman, the name she’d originally chosen under protection and now the name she’d chosen by marriage and Will can’t be happier about it. He’d have let her keep her own name, of course, or gone back to her maiden name but the fact that Helen wanted this with him is more than mind-boggling. It’s impossible. Helen makes him dream he can do the impossible, though, and makes it seem like plucking stars from the sky is no more difficult than clearing cobwebs.

Will doesn’t really get his wits back until they’ve moved from the church to the reception and he has Helen wrapped in his arms for a first dance. She’s still as radiant as she’d been when she first walked down the aisle a few hours before and Will’s not sure how he’s managed to shuffle from building to building without tripping over his own tongue. There’s stars in his eyes and they’re all for her, every last one of them.

“I swore I would never do this again, I should have you know. I’m not sure how you conned me into it, to be quite honest.” Helen’s eyes are light with mirth and her tone is musical and teasing. Her laughs and smiles were scarce when he first got her back from Druitt but after patience and caring, she seems to be better than she’s ever been before. An errant curl has slipped from the twist her hair’s pinned in beneath the veil and Will smooths it back and brushes his fingers against her cheek before addressing her question.

“And here you are. What is it, how awesome I am in bed? The fact that I live and breathe and would probably die for you? The fact that I practically took out a loan on my own eternal soul to buy you that ridiculous ring and give you this stupid expensive wedding?”

Helen laughs, high and sweet and clear and leans in to press her lips against his ear. She seems to get distracted for a moment by kissing and Will feels like his knees are going to give out on him before he hears her words. They strike right down to the core of him, even as simple as they are and he tightens his arm around her waist.

“You saved me. When I’m alone and nothing can break through and set me free, you do. You always save me, Will, and I can’t imagine a life without you.”

If Will has his way, she’ll never have to.

THE END


End file.
